


Here With You

by violents



Series: Carry On Countdown 2019 [3]
Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Angst and Fluff, But mostly fluff, Carry On Countdown (Simon Snow), Couch Cuddles, DEC 3 - Patterns, Hopeful Ending, Kissing, Laughter, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, POV Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch, Post-Canon, it's there, which is only a very minor part of this fic but sue me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2019-12-03
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:22:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21655960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violents/pseuds/violents
Summary: Simon Snow is lying on the sofa. With me.A quiet night in.
Relationships: Penelope Bunce & Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch & Simon Snow, Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow
Series: Carry On Countdown 2019 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1554958
Comments: 10
Kudos: 103
Collections: Carry On Countdown 2019





	Here With You

**Author's Note:**

> wow, a fic that doesn't have an intentional song lyric title?? from ME???
> 
> Carry On Countdown December 3rd - Patterns. I know it's early, but it's 6pm on the 3rd here, so I guess you Americans are all just LATE.

**Baz**

Simon Snow is lying on the sofa. With me.

It’s been a couple of months now, since everything was finally resolved at Watford. Even longer since our catastrophic jaunt across the Atlantic. It’s mid-spring, cool enough in the evenings to warrant throw blankets and sitting close to each other.

Well. We _were_ sitting an hour ago. Slowly but surely, Simon and I have both melted into the sofa, and eventually it got uncomfortable. Without thinking too hard about it, I laid down, and he immediately shifted to lie next to me, an arm thrown over my waist. As if it was easy, and we’ve been at that level of in-sync comfort with each other recently.

Penny is in her room, writing something for her degree. We should be going to bed soon— I have class tomorrow, and Simon has work (which is another thing that only recently just _happened_ ) at nine o’clock. He’s watching the TV, invested in whatever this programme is, but I've been fixated on him. I _can’t see past the hearts in my own eyes,_ or whatever it is Bunce said to me once.

We should go to bed— or, _he_ should go to bed, and I should decide whether I want to return to my flat or stay on the couch or sleep in Simon’s bed, not touching him. I don’t know whether that’s better or worse. However. Simon is tracing patterns at my waist through my shirt, gently like he’s not sure whether any of this means anything, and I don’t want to move. Because he’s warm and now I’m warm and his arm is solid where it’s resting on me, and I’m desperate to keep this bubble intact.

I lock eyes with him for a second, and he smiles like he’s not thinking about anything. That is definitely in my mental top-ten list of Simon Snow smiles. If he’s not thinking about anything then he won’t be stuck in his head about magic, or about his own worth, or about me.

I’m close enough to kiss him, and I lean in for it, and he pulls away. Which I should have anticipated. Something changes in his eyes, and in a split-second he apparently changes his mind and moves to kiss _me,_ long and deep and lovely _._ So.

In moving to reach his mouth, my t-shirt rode up a little. When his thumb brushes my skin, I make an embarrassing kind of half-squawk, half-laugh noise. He sits up, a confused grin on his face.

“‘Hell was that?”

“Nothing, Snow.” I’m still a little bit dizzy from the kiss. I love that he always gets it _right,_ even if he’s sometimes on the brash and clumsy side. No matter how long it’s been, no matter how much time I've spent languishing in his peripheral vision, he _still_ knows how I like to be kissed.

“No, I touched your skin and you, like, made a goose noise, why?” I laugh at _goose noise,_ then try again to deflect.

“You caught me by surprise.”

“That sounds unlikely.” He pauses for a second, then something lights up in his eyes. “Oh, you’re ticklish.”

“No. No, no, no, I’m not.”

Resistance is futile at this point.

He’s got his fingertips running up and down my sides, and I’d put the noises I’m making right now somewhere between a giggle and a shriek. It’s all _exquisitely_ embarrassing, but my shirt keeps edging up further and Simon’s expression is lit with mirth. I’ll be damned if I ever want him to stop looking like that.

At some point, he must tire of it, because he pauses with his hand flat across my stomach. It calls back (with a twinge of loss) to that morning in Hampshire so long ago, and he must recognise it too. He stops tickling me, thank Crowley. As much as I loved how pleased he was with himself for discovering this horrible secret of mine, the sensation of uncontrollable laughter being forced from you that comes with being tickled is _not_ very fun. He starts rubbing his thumb over the skin above my navel.

And it’s nice. It’s so nice. And he still looks so happy that I almost want to try to slow time (I’ve never managed that, though I’d probably make **Bullet time** work out of sheer force of will right now) and take a photo, both to show Penelope and to prove to myself that this is real.

Then he kisses me again, and his hands are both under my shirt, and I love him and I love _this_ and I love that he’s letting this happen.

He rolls us over so he’s lying on top of me, his knee between my thighs holding him up so as not to crush me beneath him. He wouldn’t, I’m a vampire, I’d be fine. He reaches out one arm to fumble for the remote to pause the show he was watching, because he clearly has his priorities straight.

I bite his lip a little, and he pulls away for a second with wide eyes, turns off the TV, and then looks at me with so _much_ in his eyes that I probably couldn’t decipher it, no matter how well I can sometimes read him. He pushes me down into the pillows with the intensity of the next kiss. My mind fills with the memory of being pushed up against the hot metal of our convertible outside the Ren Faire in the blazing sun. Back when we didn't know at all how everything was going to play out between us.

_Simon grabbing my arm and shaking me back and forth in the front seat, just because he was happy and I was there and he wanted me to know. Simon with the sun making his brown curls hot to the touch. Simon catching a firefly in his hands and just barely letting me kiss him._

Merlin, I didn’t know anything then.

Simon catches me going off into thought, as he kisses the corner of my lips and nudges my chest with his forehead. He breaks off into a yawn.

“D’you want to go to bed?” he asks, fiddling with the neckline of the t-shirt I’m wearing. It’s one of his. He’s broader in the chest than I am, and this shirt is stretched-out even on him— the neck keeps almost falling off my shoulders.

“We should.”

He stands, a little bit awkwardly as to not knee me in painful places, and then gives me a hand up and doesn’t let go. His hands are warm.

We walk together into his room, but not before he knocks on Penny’s door to let her know that he’s going to bed and make sure she’s alright.

She looks exhausted, and she’s drinking coffee at twelve o’clock at night, but she smiles and gives him a thumb’s up.

“I’m okay. Getting close to done. Goodnight, boys, close the door behind you,” she says, and her voice is raspy.

He forgets to close the door, so I do it, and then step into his room. He drops my hand to crawl into bed, still in his joggers and t-shirt, and I join him.

I’m uncertain, still. Tonight has been the best we’ve been in a while, but I don’t know whether kissing him now would be too much, or too far…

“Baz, it’s okay.” I didn’t notice him shuffle closer to me until he touched my arm. “We can… yeah.”

I don’t know if he knows what’s right to do, but he rolls onto his back and he doesn’t pull away when I go to lie next to him.

And it doesn’t— and we haven’t, for so long—

This feels like flying too close to the sun, which is stupid and melodramatic even as I think it, in this dark, warm room. I’m lying in bed with my boyfriend, his arm around my shoulders, mine thrown over his chest. His wings spelled away. Like this is normal. Like it hasn’t been months since we’ve actually fallen asleep like this.

We’ve spent so long dealing with much more important things that intimacy by way of sex hasn’t had the airspace to get addressed. I’m content for it to stay that way as long as he needs it to. I waited eight years of sleeping in a room with him, I can wait longer. Intimacy by way of falling asleep in Simon’s arms is another matter, and it’s something I have missed desperately.

“Are you alright?” he whispers, and brushes the space between my eyebrows with his thumb like he’s smoothing out a crease. Sometimes I feel like he thinks he’s clumsy and awkward and bulky, with his barely-controllable wings and tail. I wish he knew how gentle he can be.

“Better for being here with you.”

I’m looking up at him from where my cheek is pressed into the pillow a little lower than his, and a flash of something guilty comes over his expression.

“I’m sorry, Baz, I know it’s been— _Merlin,_ this year has been—”

“Don’t apologise, that wasn’t a jab, I promise. It’s the truth.”

“I know.” He moves away from me, lies on his side.

I sigh, and then realise that was probably not the right way to react and try to turn it into a yawn.

“If you want me to go, I’ll go.”

He looks almost panicked for a second.

“No, that’s not what I mean, I want you to stay.”

“ _Oh.”_

“Like, I really, really want you to stay. Unless you want to go—”

“No, I don’t want to leave,” I say in a rush. I sound desperate. I hate it. It’s honest.

“Then don’t,” he whispers, and with unprecedented confidence he kisses me as I try to pull him as close to me as I can.

I press my forehead against his and our breathing syncs, and _oh,_ how I’ve missed this.

Then he starts laughing, out of the blue, even as he’s caressing the side of my thigh.

“ _What?_ ”

“I remembered your goose noise when I barely even tickled you.”

I pout at him and cross my arms.

“We were having a moment.”

“Yeah, well. My new therapist says laughter is good for me.”

**Author's Note:**

> i am in no way equipped to write their relationship before a vague post-canon point when shit has already improved offscreen a whole lot. so, sorry if this feels out of character for right now post-WS, it's definitely supposed to be set after the third book.
> 
> my tumblr is [galaxy-houseplants](https://galaxy-houseplants.tumblr.com).
> 
> Kudos and comments fuel me. Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
